07 Oct 02
The long-awaited Focus RS is the first car to use Ford's Rallye Sport tag since the demise of the RS Cosworth Escort in 1997. And already, it is living up to the badge which has adorned some of the best driver's cars Ford has ever produced.
Foreseeing an ever-increasing demand for its quick Escorts, Ford created its Advanced Vehicle Operations in 1970. At South Ockendon in Essex, the new generation of RS Fords would be built without disrupting normal Escort production at Halewood. The cars would be sold through specially appointed Ford Rallye Sport dealers.
Graham Hill drove the first RS car (an Escort RS 1600) off the AVO line in November 1970, but when the fuel crisis hit there seemed fewer reasons for such a specialised, low volume facility and RS production was absorbed into the mainstream Ford factories in Britain and Germany by the beginning of 1975.
Not that the buyers cared. The Escort's rallying success only increased the credibility of the RS nomenclature. For purists there were specialist twin-cam models - that started many a professional rally career - while more refined cars like the shovel-nosed RS2000 blended usability with tail-out thrills, and gained a fanatical cult following that is still thriving today. If, in the eighties, less impressive front-drive RS Escorts had the potential to de-value the RS brand, then Ford more than atoned for their sins with the various RS Cosworth Sierras, which brought the hallowed badge into the realms of budget supercar-dom.
For a more comprehensive run down of the various RS models that have kept that have upheld Ford's performance image for the past three decades, read on.
